Prostitution in the Netherlands

This blog was formerly about the quest of a John to find the 'voluntary prostitute' in the Netherlands. How does a client of prostitutes separate the forced from the voluntary ones? Is it possible? That turns out to be a very difficult question. My current believe is that prostitution can never be regulated and that it would be better if people don't visit prostitutes. I see prostitution as paid sexual harassment, and therefore a human rights violation.

Short Index

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

I wanted to tell you people how I'm doing after 2 months of trying not to visit prostitutes and porn sites. (At this moment I haven't watched porn for one month, and I haven't visited a prostitute for over three months.)

The answer is, I'm still standing, but with great difficulties. I actually collapsed one month ago, and visited a porn site for a couple of minutes, but I pulled myself together again, and changed my strategy.

My first strategy was to basically become an asexual. I tried not to masturbate and not to think about sex. I have read multiple times that if you don't have sex for a while, the sex drive slowly disappears. I discovered this is not true for me. On the contrary, I can't stop thinking about sex when I try not to, and I have to suppress multiple cravings to watch porn every day. At the beginning of my attempt I walked to the train station like a zombie, to take a ride to a red light district. My conscience fortunately took over, and I decided to walk passed the train station and take a long stroll.

For one month I was able to withstand the cravings, and then I snapped. I dreamt I was having sex with two women, and I had an orgasm in my sleep. A day later I took my smartphone and watched porn. It took a few minutes, and then I had another big orgasm. I decided this is not going to work.

Being an asexual is not for me. I don't enjoy sex, or masturbation, but perhaps this is just what I should do. My main goal is not to sexually harass prostitutes who don't appreciate my unwanted penetrations and fumblings, And I don't want to get off by watching the sexual torture of people on film. Masturbation is not the problem. I have to watch out what I fantasize. My experience is that when I fantasize about porn or prostitution, there is a good chance I will actually do it. This was also a reason why I wanted to become an asexual.

I notice that the biggest craving come after a certain time of the day, usually later afternoon and during the evening. I figured that if I masturbate around three o'clock in the afternoon, that my cravings almost disappear. Only lately I had a several craving, but I masturbated it away. I can use masturbation as a tool not to get cravings. But it is hard. Sometimes I have to masturbate a lot. Three times a day, five times a day, during prearranged times.

I have noticed for years that I only get sexually aroused when something transgressive is happening. Something that is forbidden, but which I do anyway. I think visiting prostitutes is a part of that, or watching very humiliating porn. I want to change that. I try to fantasize sexually about something more friendly. Perhaps showering with a beautiful woman who smiles at me, and who wants to have sex with me. I notice I am incapable of doing that. Something strange must happen, or else I don't get aroused. It could be having sex with two women, or fantasizing about being a young beautiful woman who has sex with an ugly man, which I find strange, so it turns me on, but it never involves something which isn't shameful or humiliating. I never fantasize about romantically and lovingly having sex with the woman of my dreams. As a matter of fact, I can't even imagine having sex with a woman I am in love with! Sex and love don't belong together.

A female sex addict (at least she calls herself a sex addict, yes, I know the idea of sexual addiction is controversial), Erica Garza has also noticed that she could only get aroused by sexual humiliation (Tales of a Female Sex Addict, February 17, 2014):

Erica Garza explains that she always links sexual excitement to shame, and she relates this to the shame she felt to when she first masturbated in the bathtub at the age of 12:

I realized that in order for the videos to keep their charge, their intensity and their effectiveness, I needed them to induce shame in me. After all, that’s how I found pleasure — in that bathtub at 12, submerged in fear and confusion and the belief that I was bad — and that’s how it had to remain. I’d wired the neural networks in my brain so well that it had become impossible for me to feel sexually turned on without feeling horrible about it. No longer was there enough shame in simply watching porn. I needed darkness. To be disgusted. To be traumatized.

And, just as I’d blamed yet glorified my softcore hero Shannon Tweed as a child, the women in various porns were also subject to my ambivalence, and eventually my anger. I wanted them to be punished for their insatiable lust, their vacant eyes, and their tireless, mechanical movements with men, just as I emotionally punished myself for my similar relationship with porn. Their sad stories were my own.

Porn had also warped my sex life. The act was unsatisfying unless I felt some inkling of shame. I often fantasized about men cheating on me, hurting me, using me, just so I could get off. I rarely allowed myself to surrender to the sensations or our connection — that’s not the kind of pleasure I knew. In order to keep this going, I had to have more sex and more fantasies. I’m sure many of my past lovers can attest to my insatiability, my unrealistic demands and my frustration if I was denied. They would probably recall my emotional distance, my lack of eye contact and my inability to orgasm unless I used my hand or vibrator. I was too angry and sad to enjoy sex, but that’s not all. I was too angry and sad to enjoy life.

I recognize myself in her story, the only difference is my family is not sexual conservative like her family was. My parents actually encouraged masturbation. My father even encouraged watching pornography. When I was a teenager, I even watched a hardcore porn film together with my parents and my sisters!! (My mother didn't like the anal parts though.) But my own sexuality is still linked to shame and humiliation. It could be because of actually watching porn, that this is the message that pornography conveys, that sex is something dirty and shameful. I'm influenced too much by porn.

Erica Garza did find a more intimate and loving kind of sexuality by meeting her husband. Unfortunately I am so awkward that I will never find my soulmate. So that means that I have to completely reprogram myself on my own. It will be difficult.

Some people believe sex addiction doesn't exist. And perhaps they are right. There are psychiatrists who believe that mental illnesses don't exist in the first place, because determining what behaviour is strange or aberrant is extremely subjective. And this could be true also, but I have a damn hard time trying not to do sexual things I personally reject. If I should believe the likes of David Ley, then I should accept that I watch porn and I should accept my visits to prostitutes. In his opinion sex is always good, porn is good, prostitution is good. But I am too aware of the abuse happening in the sex industry. I know what I'm watching and what I'm doing, and I am horrified it turns me on. For anyone who believes porn is benign, read the revelations by an anonymous porn actress about her work conditions on Maggie McNeill's blog (who is ironically a staunch defender of the sex industry, and she isn't the porn actress by the way):

I am an award winning porn performer. My image is that of a hypersexual young woman who is insatiable—a sex symbol for my fans. But off camera, that image could be farther from reality. At first, my porn life didn’t interfere too much with my real life; I was still able to have sexual relationships on camera, and my libido was as high as ever. But after I was in the industry for a while, my sex drive dropped to non-existent and the thought of a man’s penis penetrating me now makes me cringe. Why? A lot of reasons.

On set, I’m expected to have sex for hours. After a while, the sex isn’t pleasurable; it’s actually quite painful. Long days on set paired with exhaustion cause tears and cuts in my vagina- oftentimes it happens on set and I am told to power through to complete the scene. Having sex with a tear is excruciatingly painful. My many sexual partners and exploits have also led to another painful problem: pelvic inflammatory disease, an infection that causes inflammation of the uterus and ovaries. In other words, every time a penis gets deep inside me the pain is unreal. Normally, pelvic inflammatory disease is treated with antibiotics and abstinence from sex, but being that my job is to have sex, it comes and goes for me.

Sexual trauma from my past has also given me a mental block that arises whenever I have a sexual encounter. I, like many other survivors, suffer from PTSD because of the assaults I have experienced. Also, the thought of having sex and not being paid for it now bothers me; it’s as though I only view men as dollar signs, as games to be won. Before, I always loved men AND women! But now I’m encumbered by this aversion to men, and the thought of having sex with a man does not appeal to me in the slightest. I still find men attractive, but I don’t have the urge to jump on him and fuck him like I used to.

Obviously, this is causing issues in my relationship with my boyfriend. He is amazing and understanding, but I feel guilty for not being able to please him; we have only had sex 2 times this summer (I know, it’s horrible). I have seen a therapist and he advised me to quit sex work, and maybe he’s right; maybe it is causing permanent damage to my psyche. But it’s my livelihood and I still love it in most ways. Does anyone have any advice? What do I do to get over this mental blockage? How do I begin to have a normal sex life again? Help!

To those who say that her experiences are not representative of the working conditions in pornography in general, I would say that the type of porn films she plays in is very mainstream, lots of rough sex for with multiple partners, and without protection. What happened to this anonymous porn actress is made possible by mainstream porn.

I desperately want to stop watching porn and abusing prostitutes, so I will continue this monthly report indefinitely. At the moment of writing this, I'm having a hard time again, although for several weeks I was calm. I'm very afraid that my ideas will change, and doubts will creep in, so... see you in a month.

EDIT (15 July 2015): I'm such an idiot. The night after I posted this message, I watched porn for several hours in a row. And the fun part is that I didn't enjoy it at all!!! I felt sick about it, but I couldn't stop watching. I tried to prevent this episode from happening by masturbating four or five times prior to this. It didn't work. I had a very strong craving to watch porn anyway, and I surrendered to it. I'm quite desperate at the moment. But it means masturbation doesn't really work against the cravings. I have a different theory why I have these cravings. The cravings are related to curiosity. I have noticed that after I have watched porn, I am not that much more interested anymore for a while. My curiosity is satisfied for the time being. After time goes by, when hours turn into days, and days into weeks, my curiosity is slowly building up again. And then the bomb explodes. These cravings are linked to curiosity. I have to figure out how not to be curious again. I'll really have to work this out. And I also notice that I folded again right after posting about my progress on this blog!

Friday, June 12, 2015

Do you want total strangers on the street to grab your butt?
No, that's sexual intimidation. They shouldn't do that to me.

But you visit prostitutes and you care about people?
Yes, I care about people. But the prostitutes chose this livelihood themselves. Everybody has to work.

Are you really serious? Many prostitutes do it out of poverty or because they are coerced. They are forced to tolerate sexual contacts they would otherwise refuse. That is sexual intimidation. You are sexually intimidating the prostitutes you visit.
Would you say that about other professions? Prostitution is work. I know that prostitutes are often in dire straits when they chose this line of work, but that is true for so many other professions. And you never say a construction worker is intimidated into laying bricks. And the doctor touches his or her patients very intimately. Is the doctor sexually harassed? Are the patients sexually harassed because they are forced to accept the doctor's intimate contacts? And people are abused in other professions too.

You are distracting from the main point. Sexual intimidation is sexual intimidation. Abuse in one profession doesn't legitimize abuse in the other. And the doctor is merely helping other people. Would you grab a random woman by the butt?
No, that is sexual harassment. I respect people. I love people. I would never do that!

Would you grab the waitress in the restaurant by the butt?
No, of course not! That's sexual harassment too!

And you also say this when you know she is at work?
That doesn't matter. Sexual harassment is sexual harassment.

The prostitute is just like the waitress who was harassed by you. Under normal circumstances the waitress would say: "keep your hands off my body, you pervert!". Prostitutes have very limited power to fend off this kind of harassment.
They do have that power! Many prostitutes don't want to kiss their clients. And they don't accept anal sex.

You are distracting again from the main point. Perhaps they have just enough power to avoid the most egregious violations. But they still, because of poverty and coercion, are forced to accept sexual contacts they would otherwise refuse. Perhaps they do have the power to avoid anal sex. But they don't have the power to avoid their butts being grabbed, or their vagina being penetrated. And some prostitutes do accept anal and kissing, because otherwise they don't earn enough money, especially older prostitutes.
Yes you are right! I am convinced. I won't visit prostitutes again. You are so totally right! I see it now. I have so totally disrespected the prostitutes I visit. And I have had indeed noticed some prostitutes absolutely being appalled by being penetrated by me, or being touched by me. I have horribly abused people. I am such an egoist. I will never do it again. When a person loves people, he (or she) won't visit prostitutes.

Indeed. I love you!
I love you too!

Thank you. And there is a solution the problem of prostitution. We should love each other, and help other people out when they are in trouble, and not use our monetary power to sexually abuse them, or to let them do dangerous or degrading things.
Indeed. I just love you.

I love you too!
:)

:)

(PS: you can also change prostitute into porn actor/actress in this conversation, only the harassment is done by proxy)

(PS 2: and I immediately have to admit that the very same day I wrote this, I actually did visit a porn site, although very shortly. But that was against my promises. That little voice in my head that says that prostitution is okay is still there. And I notice that just visiting the porn site itself is very arousing, not actually watching it. It is the transgression that is arousing. I actually did very well, because I didn't visit porn sites for a month. It is annoying that I have to keep fighting urges. I think I will try to reform my sexual fantasies, and refocus them away from pornography and prostitution. It will be difficult, because it is the transgressive sex that I actually like.)

Monday, June 08, 2015

As some people who are familiar with my blog know, I have a big problem with my own sexuality. I have said in my farewell speech that I don't want to confront the outside world with my sexual problems again, and that I completely want to shut down my blog. I have made some attempts in the past to completely stop watching porn and visiting prostitutes. This was kind of embarrassing, because again and again, I did both these things anyway.

Now that I am completely converted to the ideology of abolitionism, I have regained hope. Nowadays I believe that all pornography and prostitution is a human rights violation, whether this happens with consent or not. The workers in these sectors are essentially paid to be sexually assaulted. Coercion or despair is what drives people into this horrendous world. I don't believe people who say that they have no problems with this kind of work, and that they are treated respectfully by clients and pornographers. And I don't believe in benign pornography. All paid sex is abusive, always, with no exception. All sex without mutual love and respect is abusive. In porn and prostitution there is no respect and love. Some people will call me a prude, a fundamentalist and a moral crusader when I say this. I will say to them that they have no conscience. They support rape and torture under the guise of consent. Look at prostitution defender Laura Agustín when she defends child prostitution and the respect that she has for the women when they consent to prostitution, when she admits that prostitutes say to her that they experience working in prostitution as degrading, sinful, rape, and as exploitative:

So to all the people who support the rape industry, I say FUCK YOU!!! And I am proud to be a moral crusader.

So all prostitution and pornography is abuse, always, so that should make my choices easy. I should never watch porn, and visit prostitutes. The last time I visited a porn site was 25 days ago. The last time I visited a prostitute was more than 2 months ago. I decided to track my progress via twitter, and I do admit that I am struggling. My choice to break with the sex industry is not easy. I still have cravings to watch porn. I have to convince myself again and again that it is not okay to watch people being sexually tortured. That little voice within me which says that the sex industry is okay has not disappeared. I also, at the last moment, had to prevent myself from visiting a red light district again. I was already walking to the train station. I decided at the last moment to walk passed the train station, and take a long stroll to cool down.

I have noticed that not masturbating makes it easier not to watch porn. I haven't masturbated for a month. Masturbation could bring up thoughts of visiting a prostitute or a porn site, and this could stimulate me to actually do it. I notice that I regularly think about porn and prostitutes. I just have to stop this. My whole sexuality is wired to the abusive, unloving and disrespectful sexuality of pornography and prostitution. Loving and respectful sex cannot turn me on. So I decided to switch off my sexuality altogether. I have also made such an attempt in the past, but I failed after three months. But I want to do it again.

I have read that when a person doesn't do anything with sex for a while, feelings of sexuality will disappear. This is what I am aiming for. But I need a strong will. Feelings of sexuality flare up daily, and I should fend these thoughts off. I must do nothing with them, not stimulate them. But it is difficult. I hope by keeping track of my thoughts on twitter on a daily basis, that it will make my struggle easier. When I feel strong cravings, I will mention it on twitter. I also count the days on twitter. This is my twitter-account by the way:

I write in the Dutch language on my account, it is my mother language, I prefer it that way. And I decided that every month I will write something about my struggle on my blog. I want to have the feeling that people know what I am doing, and I want them to support me.

And, I am also thinking about rewriting my FAQ. In my old FAQ there are still some ideas which support the sex industry, although I do admit in it that all clients of prostitutes are evil and such. There are some tips to avoid forced prostitutes in it, but now that I definitely don't believe in voluntary prostitution anymore, I want to keep these parts out in a later version.

Within one month I hope to see you back, and I hope that I won't admit that I have strayed from the path again. This could be very dangerous, because often I lose all hope when this happens, and then I enter into a frenzy of visiting porn sites and prostitutes.

So, please thumb me. And see you in a month.

Greetings to cliente X, and to Eleni if she would ever visit my blog, I love you Eleni!

Monday, April 20, 2015

I have said not to write on my blog again, but cliente X stirred me up, and he said that he misses my posts. So I say okay.

I want to write one final post, to really close it all off for good. There should be one final conclusion. What after all those years of studying prostitution and visiting prostitutes, what have I learned?

I first have to say that not writing and reading about prostitution didn’t help me to stop visiting prostitutes. I have visited Eleni 3 times since my last post. It was as cozy as ever before. Eleni is a very nice person. But I still feel bad about it. I have explained it to Eleni, and that I actually wanted to stop going to prostitutes. I have said to her that some prostitutes I visit clearly feel embarrassed about doing this job, and that I preferred to go to her because she seems neutral about the work. She looked with a stern face when I said this to her. And then she said to me that she is always friendly towards her clients, because then they come back. [She has told me once during another occasion that a colleague of hers (Alex) doesn’t do this, and she has no repeat customers. They never return.]

The window brothel where she works (on the Goldbergersteeg 8) is going to be closed. She has said before that she will be going home to Greece when this happens. She thinks she won’t find a new room near the canals. The subject of the prostitution boats on the Zandpad came up. I have said to her that I cheered when all these boats were closed by the municipality. She looked at me with her eyes wide open. I said to her that I would cheer if ALL the brothels were closed. And I said that I am against prostitution. I just blurted it out. This is actually what I think. I tapped with my finger on the side of my forehead, and I said to her that I was crazy. She still looked at me with open eyes, and the her mouth curled up at the edges. I have visited her again two times after this. And it is crazy indeed. How can you be against prostitution and still visit prostitutes? It isn’t right.

I am going to be honest with you people. I really AM against prostitution. I believe in almost all cases it is a human rights violation. I think theoretically, only in some very special controlled circumstances, it can be benign. But this is rare, and I wonder if you can call these cases prostitution.

I think that are two main types of voluntary prostitutes:
1. Women from the SM-scene who get a kick out of being humiliated by misogynist men. These people appear shortly in the sex industry, and can leave immediately whenever their thrill is over. These people have a privileged background, and don’t financially depend on the sex industry. In my opinion these people aren’t true prostitutes. They temporarily work in the industry, not because of the money, but because of the sexual thrill.
2. There are some prostitutes who strictly work with a fixed group of customers whom they have selected because these customers behave with respect towards the prostitutes. I think that these women also aren’t really prostitutes, because the men who visit them are more like friends.

I am aware of prostitutes who say that nearly all clients treat them with respect, and one of them is my favorite Eleni! But I say these prostitutes don’t tell the truth. I will tell why. There are some prostitutes who defend the sex industry who have made some surprising admissions about their clients, about their situation in prostitution, or about the situation of other prostitutes. I have mentioned what these women said earlier on my blog, so it is basically old-hat. I knew it all along. These women are:

-Metje Blaak, a former spokesperson for the Red Thread (Rode Draad), a Dutch labour union for prostitutes, which has been dissolved a few years ago. She has written many books about prostitution and she often appears in the media.
-Jo Doezema, co-founder of the Red Thread. She has written some articles defending the sex industry, and she has written a book.
-Margo Alvarez, also a co-founder of the Red Thread. A film was made about her and she has appeared in the media several times defending the sex industry.
-Mariska Majoor, who runs the Prostitution Information Centre in the main red light district of Amsterdam. She is a major defender of prostitution, often appearing in the media.

These women are outspoken defenders of prostitution. And in the meantime they have said some very negative things about it. I think these things must me true because they are clearly embarrassed about it. I call this the criterion of embarrassment. This criterion is sometimes used by biblical scholars who want to argue that some events in the life of Jesus had to be real, because these events were so embarrassing for his followers that it is difficult to imagine that they could have lied about it. (I must say that in this case I don’t quite follow these biblical scholars because I am convinced that Jesus Christ isn’t an historical person!)

Metje Blaak has said in an interview(translated by me from Dutch): “Clients are just like children. They want to grab everything. You sometimes have to deal with them harshly. Especially when they start biting in your nipples and touch your genitals with their fingernails. You’ll have to wean them off this habit. I trained my regular customers in such a way that they were kind.” (Iemand moet het doen – over vuil werk en andere schone zaken, Joeri Boom, 1999)

Metje Blaak has also lamented the situation of prostitutes in an interview in 2002 (translated from Dutch): “(…) and nowadays eight out of 10 girls are forced. That’s a misery, you have no idea. Those men around it are called pimps, but these are big fat criminals. Those pimps of the past were a joke compared with what happens today. You slipped them something if they did something for you, and then they thought they were a pimp. In fact you controlled them. But now the girls are being threatened with their lives, that has become a different story. (…)” (Niet echt spijt, Tanya Wijngaarde, MUG-magazine, March 2002). Okay, we have to take the percentages that she uses with a pinch of salt, but I surmise that she probable cannot get around the fact that a lot of prostitutes that she was acquainted with were coerced. She now denies in her book Moskou aan de Amstel (2013) that lots of coercion happens in the sex industry by the way, but I think this represents a strategic shift of hers which confirms to me even more that she is clearly embarrassed about admitting the large scale of coercion.

Jo Doezema has said in an interview that ‘all brothels are actually shit’, and

In a club the clients drink and most times so do you because you make money getting drinks. It's also very difficult to refuse a client. Most clubs won't come right out and say "you have to go with everybody that wants you," but they put a lot of pressure on you. Some of those guys running the clubs are real bastards. Mostly they're men, though there are some women. But having a woman boss is no guarantee that anything will be any better. The really good bosses are women, that's true, but it's not the case that every woman is a good boss. There are a lot of Madames out there, the woman who started out herself as a prostitute, worked her way up and is determined to exploit the hell out of everybody who's working for her. (Live sex acts, Wendy Chapkis, 1993)

and

A lot of clients have the idea that their hours will be filled with sex of whatever sort they want. And because you can’t say in the beginning. “If you want this, this, and this, it's going to cost this much, and this I don’t do,” you are kind of struggling the whole time to keep the clients from doing things you don’t want and try to keep him satisfied at the same time. (Live sex acts, Wendy Chapkis, 1993)

Jo Doezema has also offered an explanation as to why she paints such a positive picture of her work to outsiders:

I think for almost everybody I make it more positive than it is, because everybody has such a negative idea about it already. So you tend to only talk about the good things or the funny things. With most jobs, if you have a shitty day or a bad client or something, people don’t immediately say that it’s because of the kind of work you do and that you must stop right away. But with prostitution, I’ve always felt that if I didn’t convince everybody that this work was fantastic for me and that I really loved it that they would all be on my back to quit.’ (Live sex acts, Wendy Chapkis, 1993).

Radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys has also pointed to this particular interview with Jo Doezema, in her book The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade (2009). You can download the book here:

Her attitude towards having to suffer unwanted sex acts, which would be called sexual harassment or sexual assault outside the prostitution context, is to blame herself: ‘Sure, there are still times when I put up with something from a client that I don’t want to have happen, either because I’m too tired, or I don’t know how to say that I don’t want it. But I have learned now to deal with that; instead of thinking, “Oh, I’m the worst whore in the world”, I just think, “Okay, next time better”’ (...) Currently Doezema, along with other sex worker activist colleagues, minimizes the harms of prostitution in order to achieve the decriminalization of the industry. The minimization of harm is a common practice amongst prostituted women, who routinely block out or downplay the violence they experience both inside and outside prostitution (...)

Also the feminist Anke Manschot has pointed out some of the striking admissions of prostitutes who defend prostitution. In November 2002 she wrote a critical article about prostitution in the Dutch female magazine OPZIJ (the title of the article was Moet een hoerenloper gestraft?). In February 2003 Marjan Wijers, Marieke van Doorninck, Jacqueline Waterman and Marisja Majoor reacted critically to this article in the same magazine (the title of the article was Laat prostituees zelf aan het woord). They said that people should let prostitutes speak for themselves, and they criticize feminists who are against prostitution for being paternalistic. Anke Manschot wrote a response which was published in the same article (with the title Een prostituee is aan de wolven overgeleverd...).

Anke Manschot refers in the last mentioned article to a book Metje Blaak wrote called De Trukendoos. Handboek voor hoeren (1998). In the book Metje Blaak asks women who want to be prostitutes: Am I resistent to total humiliation? Can I stand the loneliness? If the answer is yes, then you are fit for the oldest profession. In her opinion all her clients smelled badly, and this costs lots of energy. Metje wonders if prostitutes have any friends. She admits she never had one. At the end of the book Metje says that 60 percent of the prostitutes have been abused, 30 percent are encouraged to work in prostitution by their boyfriends, and 10 percent really chose for the work in prostitution. In the book Who the fuck is Daatje Smit (1997) Metje calls prostitution the dirtiest profession in the world. She also says that when you work in the world of prostitution, you have no time to think, you are only busy with surviving.

Anke Manschot also referred to Margot Alvarez who has said in an interview in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool (translated from Dutch): “Sometimes there is a healthy man among them, but they are rare, hear [me out], it is something that makes you desperate”. Anke Manschot unfortunately didn’t mention the date and title of the article. Anke Manschot also mentions some things Mariska Majoor has said in Het Parool (, and unfortunately Anke Manschot doesn't mention the exact date and title of the article). Mariska Majoor says that she cannot work in prostitution again. She could do the work because she didn't think about what she was doing. Now that she doesn't work in prostitution anymore, she realizes that she cannot work in prostitution.

To be short and sweet, I think these women are right. To sum up:

1. Clients don’t take the boundaries of prostitutes into consideration. They don’t respect the prostitutes. (Metje Blaak, Jo Doezema)
2. Decent/healthy/nice men are rare. (Margot Alvarez, Metje Blaak)
3. Good brothels don’t exist. All brothels are abusive/shit. (Jo Doezema)
4. Many prostitutes are severely exploited.(Metje Blaak, Jo Doezema)
5. If you know what you are doing, you don’t work in prostitution. (Mariska Majoor)

Even Ilse de Rooij a former prostitute, who stars in porn films has said (actually in an introduction to a porn-film which is offline), that it happens often, too often, that clients don’t treat her with respect.

I don’t believe in the explanation that these particular women just had bad luck and that mainly the evil clients found their way to them. I don’t believe that these women receive radically different clients than other prostitutes. They are not ugly or something.

As I said before, this information is basically old-hat. I knew it all along. And I have wondered if I should write this blog post, because I have talked about it so much already. But it is difficult when some prostitutes say that they like their work, and that the clients are considerate and treat them with respect. This is also what many prostitutes said to the researcher Nick Mai. I wrote about him on my blog:

But I think these women who say that are just like Jo Doezema when she says she paints a more positive picture of prostitution than it really is. I think it is some kind of shield or something, a way of self-protection. You tell to the world and yourself that prostitution is okay and the clients are respectful, while in reality this is not true. Radical feminists call this internalized oppression (which is also what Anke Manschot explained in her article in the OPZIJ). It is the same thing that happens when women defend the religious rules in which they themselves are oppressed. Think about female circumcision which is a ritual largely perpetuated by women. Or think about the oppressive Mosaic laws in Judaism and Christianity, and the sharia law in Islam. If you look closely at these laws, these laws are really oppressive towards women. But women still support these systems. Perhaps you could call it Stockholm syndrome, ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. Like some kind of hostage situation. Because one totally depends on the hostage takers, in order to survive one decides to cooperate with them, up to the point that one really starts to believe in his/her own oppression. And that’s why you see prostitutes defending the sex industry.

Because of their dire economic situation, prostitutes are forced to accept unwanted intimate contacts with their clients. It is like taking part in an SM-session, but without a codeword to stop. Some prostitutes have more financial clout to prevent the most transgressive requests from clients, but others don’t. I have heard from prostitutes that they were more or less forced to offer and perform blowjobs without condom because they could hardly get any clients otherwise. I know of prostitutes who have said that they reject a large percentage of clients because they were impolite to begin with, even up to half of them. What if a prostitute is less economically powerful and is more or less forced to also accept these men? Contrary to what many people believe, many prostitutes don’t make a lot of money. Many are not so beautiful. I notice the older a prostitute becomes the more likely it is she will offer anal sex and sex without condom. I think they try to attract more clients this way, because their income is dropping while they become older and less attractive to clients.

As a client you by definition don’t care about her feelings. What you pay for is for attention and sex, irrespective of when she desires this or not. There is no respect to begin with. When a man respects other people’s feelings, he cannot visit a prostitute. He would just be too scared to offend somebody. Even if that somebody says she has no problems with her work. He would be distrustful because he is aware of her dire situation which makes her say things she doesn’t mean.

People should be protected against sexual harassment in the workplace. And because prostitutes, as an intrinsic part of their work, are systematically sexually molested at their workplace, sexual services should be prohibited to protect workers in general. And I think this could even be done in a system where prostitution is decriminalized. Even then sexual assault is illegal, and all workers should be protected against it. That some workers don’t rise up against it is because they don’t have the economic or social power to do it. And that is why society as a whole should do it. Society should stand up to protect the powerless!

That’s my honest opinion, it’s out. I am not going to lie anymore to myself. Eleni and all the others are abused. She has said to me that all the clients treat her with respect, but I know that she lies. I just cannot believe those prostitutes who say that they don’t feel abused and that they like their work. They could tell it to me. But I just cannot believe them. Even if a 1000 prostitutes would try to convince me that everything is a-ok, I won’t believe them. I just won’t.

A doctor doesn’t have sex with his patients because he would abuse his position of power would he do that. An employer doesn’t demand his workers to have sex with him or the clients of the premise. This is abuse of power.

(Okay, now follows a big rant part, I hope I don't offend too many people.)

Many people who support prostitution are libertarians. And I think that libertarianism is the only ideology callous enough to support it. In the context of prostitution libertarians say that people have the right not to like their work. That’s how they defend sexual assault in the workplace.
Libertarians place consent above human dignity. A worker who out of poverty decides to work in a dangerous workplace where this person is badly treated, deserves every abuse, according to libertarians. The worker after all consented. And a woman who is maltreated by her husband also chooses this according to libertarians, because she doesn’t leave, which means she chooses the violence. There are even libertarians who defend domestic violence as a legitimate lifestyle!

Libertarians believe people should have the right to make mistakes. Therefore, when a person is tricked into doing something, this is acceptable according to libertarians, also because it is consensual. In their opinion, these people are just idiots who are responsible for their own misery.

Libertarians want to abolish social security and solidarity. They also want to remove the age of consent, and all the laws protecting workers. They also want to abolish the prohibition of child labour. You hear more and more prostitution defenders also defending to right of children to work in the sex industry, and for adults to use them.

Libertarians won’t directly say that they support torture and sexual assault or the right to be subjected to it, because in their opinion, what other people would call torture and sexual assault shouldn’t be called this way because it is consensual after all.

People who defend prostitution are the scum of the Earth (, although I must say I can understand the difficult situation of some prostitutes who feel forced to openly defend the system in which they are oppressed). The pro-prostitution movement is a hate movement. They say that we should listen to the sex workers, but they themselves only listen to those sex workers who support their own callous libertarian views. Prostitutes who point out abuse by clients and pimps in the sex industry are vilified and slandered.

There is one thing I like to address when I say that prostitution should be abolished. Often in many countries brothels are closed without an escape plan for prostitutes. They are not compensated. I cannot deny that some prostitutes make good money in prostitution, which they can use to maintain whole families, and even buy luxuries! This is a hellish dilemma, I know, because although prostitution is abusive, good things come out of it and that is money! Money to send children to school, pay for hospital bills etc… If you take away their profession without compensating them, they will lose precious income, and this is also not good.

I think it is the duty of the government when a brothel is closed, to cover the expenses of the prostitute and the people she maintains. This will be very expensive I know. If my plan would be carried out in the Netherlands, it could cost over a billion euro a year. Think about 10.000 prostitutes in the Netherlands who maintain 10 family members per prostitute at least, and if you assume a minimum income of 10.000 euro per person per year, and also thinking about the yearly influx of new people in the sex industry each year, you will easily reach such a large amount of money. I think the problem is that governments could end up spending more on prostitutes than on defense. My gut feeling is that people are not willing to make this offer.

But I think it is worth it. Abuse can never be tolerated.

We should help each other!

Although I believe the selling of sexual services should be prohibited, and giving fines to pimps or clients can could good sometimes, the emphasis should lie on helping people. I think if you give prostitutes a decent amount of money and free them from potential oppressors, then the fast majority will stop immediately with their work, follow a study and move on to more respectful work. I think a small minority will continue.

And I want to say something more. Police shouldn’t harass prostitutes, or use violence against them, or raid them. There have been some occasions in the Netherlands during which the police rounded up whole streets of window prostitutes to ask them if they were forced (they all said they worked voluntarily in prostitution by the way). There were also reports that the police broke into the homes of prostitutes to find evidence against pimps. I think this is not the way to treat people. I think prostitutes should be approached with respect and offered help to leave their dire situation. The pro-prostitution movement is right in criticizing the police for harassing prostitutes. But this is because libertarians want to destroy the state, and they see the police as hostile government agents. The pro-prostitution movement is blind to the continuous sexual assaults perpetrated by clients. It might be true that some prostitutes experience more harassment from the police than from clients, but this isn’t a reason to support the harassment by clients.

And I am also aware that there are other professions where workers are severely abused, but this is not intrinsic to their work. There are ways around it. Salaries and working conditions could be improved. This is not true for prostitution where unwanted sexual contacts are exactly what prostitutes are paid for. A world without abuse in the workplace is a world without prostitution to begin with! Prostitution largely exist because there is inequality; inequality between men and women, the rich and the poor, etc… It exists because society has failed! And the same is true for abuse in the workplace in general. It exists because inequality exists.

But it is true that other workers other than prostitutes are also abused. I have my doubts about work in general too, because market capitalism forces people to work as hard as they can, up to the point it becomes bad for their health. Perhaps the work itself is not degrading, but everything surrounding it is. I think a solution could be to minimize comsumption in general. This would have two positive effects at once. It would alleviate the strain on both workers and the environment. And we need a powerful state to spread wealth as much as possible. Only a state can do this, smaller voluntary social organizations don't have the power to do this.

I also often hear the argument (which I have used myself in the past) that we all are forced to work because of economic circumstances, so it doesn’t matter that some people work in prostitution. I think in an ideal world where robots could do everything many people will still work, because people feel fulfilled when they add their share to society. They want to be a part of the social fabric of society. In only very rare cases people feel fulfilled when working as a prostitute. (I have to admit that I prefer to lock myself into a room and play videogames). I think in such a society prostitution would be truly voluntary, but rare, and only carried out by what I would call the sadomasochists who could leave the trade whenever they want. But perhaps the men are nicer in such a world so prostitutes would have it better, I don't know.

I also have to point something out about the abolitionist movement. Although I support their position now, I cannot deny that they spread disinformation about the sex industry. You hear time and time again that the average age of entry into prostitution is 14 years. This is repeated again and again, without tracing the original source. I say that the real age of entry is more like 25. And you’ll also often hear that foreign prostitutes who are severely exploited, mostly don’t know what their jobs will be when they departed from their home country. In reality the large majority knows, but they have to hand over large percentages of their income, or certain agreements are not followed, or they are threatened by the intermediaries, etc...

I should never visit prostitutes again. As a side note I want to mention a phone call I had with a telephone sex worker. At first we had a silly sexual conversation, but it evolved into a serious conversation, and she gave her real phone number. She told me why she did this work. She was a freelance teacher, and couldn’t make ends meet, so she decided to have sexual conversations with men for money. She told me that those men who phone her are really dirty men. I asked her if I was also a dirty man. She said that she 'deducted a stripe' from me. She said that this was a waste of money, and that I should search for a real woman. I now think, that’s what many prostitutes could say to me if I would meet them in real life. Perhaps that’s what Eleni could say to me after she has stopped working in prostitution. At least I could hear her moan with disapproval when I said to her that I once had visited 5 prostitutes in two weeks.

I really like Eleni. I am so afraid that she thinks badly of me, although she is nice to me because I am one of her clients after all. And she is always nice to her clients. Lately I heard the bad news that Eleni is known among other prostitutes to be coerced. But I must say I don't believe it, because she said to me she could walk to the nearby police any time she wants, in lingerie if necessary.

And now again, finally…

farewell

I'm looking forward to see you in part 3 where I will criticize Dina Siegel with her preposterous conclusion that there was no forced prostitution on Het Zandpad in Utrecht.

(I'm joking a bit here. I'm awaiting her report which will be released in May. It will be called 'Closing brothels, is closing eyes'. Perhaps I will write about it, perhaps not. She says that many prostitutes are not in good shape after the Zandpad was closed. And she found no evidence of forced prostitution. I think this conclusion is way too daring. Among the hundreds of prostitutes there sure are some women who are forced by their boyfriends or who are extorted some kind of way. I have visited prostitutes on de Zandpad in 2011 and I got the strong impression that a group of young Moroccans had some girls working there. They were visibly present there, they seemed to feel absolutely free when they harassed prostitutes, and I saw no security who interfered. They drove rounds in cars, and sometimes they step out in groups to walk towards the windows to the women, have a short babble, and walk back towards their cars. They cheered from their cars when (I presume) one of the prostitutes danced with her ass for them. A group of around 10 Moroccan boys almost walked over me, and I saw one of those Moroccan guy trying to pull open a window of a prostitute, but she had locked it. He screamed: "You are mad! What must you do?! What must you do?! Fucking is what you must do!". Softly and shyly she repeatedly said: yes, yes. She unlocked the door and she let him in. There is no direct evidence that these boys actually were pimps, they could just as well have been a bunch of hooligans. My strong impression is that they actually were pimps. But if they were hooligans, I didn't see any security team trying to stop these boys, and unfortunately I didn't dare to interfere myself. I agree with Dina Siegel that how things went with the closure of het Zandpad weren't okay. I believe the women should have been compensated.)

Saturday, September 06, 2014

I haven't written on my blog(s) for a long time. I am out of words. I have nothing new to say. Everything there is to say has been said already. I would repeat myself if I did say anything.

Lately, I decided to stop following the news about prostitution. I cancelled my email-alert subscription(s). I stopped following all the news. I don't read the forced prostitution verdicts on rechtspraak.nl anymore.

I try to break all the links I have with the world of prostitution. I silently hoped it would stop my regular visits to prostitutes. Perhaps I thought, it all has to do with the obsession. Guess what, it didn't work. Actually I'm planning to visit Eleni again on September 23, 2014. I will be happy to see her again when she comes back from vacation.

I keep saying to myself that if I have doubts about the conditions prostitutes work in, I should simply stop visiting prostitutes. Prostitution is not a necessity of life. I can do without. At least I can comfort myself with the thought that I need food for a living, so I have to care less for the workers (and other creatures) who work or who are being processed in the food industry. I do avoid animal products altogether. This is basically what I can do. I can't avoid buying food, but I can be somewhat selective regarding the food I buy. I can't totally avoid profiting from the abuse of other beings who work in the food industry or who are being processed in it, or regarding other essential industries for that matter, but I can lessen the damage by avoiding certain products.

I can totally avoid prostitutes. There is absolutely no valid reason to visit one, except for personal gratification, getting off on somebody else regardless of how this person feels about it. But I keep doing it. And I can't stop. Yes, many prostitutes are very friendly and patient, and at first there seems to be nothing wrong with the whole idea of prostitution. If prostitutes are not bothered by strange men touching their bodies, and if these men behave with care, then in theory there is nothing wrong. But obviously the reality could be different: forced prostitution (although it is difficult to gauge the true extent of this phenomenon), or economic necessity forcing people to do work which absolutely hurts them personally, I know, I know, I have been through that. And obviously it is not clear beforehand who are the 'voluntary' and who are the 'forced' prostitutes I know, I know .... and obviously I only want to visit the 'free' prostitutes and 'avoid' the 'involuntary' prostitutes (or do I?), I know I know, I have told a lot about it. No I don't agree with Maggie McNeill that people have the 'right' not to like their work. I believe people have the right not to be tortured. But I have said this already, I would be going in loops.

But this is a struggle I have to deal with myself. There is no use sharing it with the world. I have written about this issue multiple times on this blog, and now I am repeating myself again, so....

Anyway, farewell. There are other joys in life, and I try to pursue them now (... World of Warcraft, the Elder Scrolls Online, and such, hey, there are probably also people abused in the game/computer industry, haven't thought about that!! It is very difficult to be a righteous person. Oh, I could by cynical, haven't I told that a lot? How cynical I was?). Wish me good luck.

I won't remove my blog, everything can be found on the wayback machine anyway. I hope people will find something useful on this blog.

For a while there was confusion about her identity. Some people suspected that her account was a hoax. I also suspected this. It wasn’t immediately clear that she was the girlfriend of Mark van der Beer. She suddenly was there and she joined discussions. I recognized the arguments of Mark van der Beer in het arguments. And suddenly I had a Eureka moment.

Because I was aware of who the girlfriend of Mark van der Beer was on de Wallen, I immediately asked Anna Felicia if she was XXXXXX! This was an enormous blunder, because what I did was absolutely dumb and asocial. (Sorry, that was an impulsive action.) After a couple of minutes I corrected the mistake, but she did block me permanently anyway. Later Mark van der Beer informed me angrily that I had violated the privacy of his girlfriend.

By the way, I have written something about Mark van der Beer and his girlfriend, here:

Although I knew who she was on de Wallen, all this time I have never dared to approach her and figure out if she really is the girlfriend of Mark van der Beer. Perhaps she knew nothing of his blog, and he didn’t give me permission to approach her anyway. But now that she has appeared on twitter I could inform her that I would come to here, and she thought it was okay, but I did have to pay. Unfortunately she started a little later that day, so I walked for one and a half hour across the red light district (de Wallen), until I noticed that the red lights above her window started to burn. Unfortunately the curtains were still closed. I waited for her for 40 minutes. At the end she opened the curtains. She looked at me with suspicion.

With a little doubt she let me in. I asked her if she was XXXXXX. This was correct. I introduced myself as Donkey from twitter. I asked if she was indeed Felicia Anna from twitter.

And this was correct!!!!!

And Mark van der Beer also exists. And no, she is not ‘the journalist’, and he isn’t either.

I paid her fair and square, and I first decided to introduce myself. I told her that I visited de Wallen 10 years ago, that I visited 3 prostitutes, and then I read about forced prostitution in de media, that it supposedly happened a lot on de Wallen in Amsterdam, and that therefore I didn’t dare to visit prostitutes for years.

She told me that when she started to work in prostitution that she also believed these stories from the media. She felt compassion for these women. But now that she works in prostitution for four years herself she doesn’t believe in it anymore.

She told for example that she chats a lot with other prostitutes. This happens for instance in the little kitchen. She asks me how it is possible that forced prostitutes would do this. After all, don’t they always have to stand behind the window, smile and make money? She also tells that often they are chatting with each other in each other’s rooms. And often they are phoning each other with their cell phones for hours and hours, so you don’t have to believe immediately that they are being kept in check by their pimps.

And she argues that the forced prostitutes could immediately go to the police. The police is always ready for you. And she says when clients notice that you are forced, they will offer you help. And there is an alarm button in the prostitution rooms. When you press that button the police comes immediately. She also complains that nearly all clients ask her if she is forced. When she says no, the clients say like “okay”.

She also finds it strange that people make such a fuss about prostitutes giving money to their lovers and husbands. Outside of prostitution people would find this normal, but when it happens within the world of prostitution people make a fuss about it. She says prostitutes also have a private life. Many prostitutes simply have boyfriends and husbands. And it is not strange that many Bulgarian and Romanian boyfriends and husbands of prostitutes don’t work, because they simply can’t find work here in the Netherlands. This is not because they are parasites or exploiters. Above all, they weren’t even allowed to work here until not so long ago.

I talked with her about my difficulties developing erections, and that on top of it I have premature orgasms. She says that this happens because of the weed. I said that I don’t use weed. (I was very tense at that moment, I was continuously blinking very hard with my eyes, so….)

She says that clients are often too excited. Especially tourists. They are very happy when they can legally visit a prostitute here. And when they do visit a prostitute at last, then it won’t work. She says that clients sometimes pay for an hour or a couple of hours. But she just sits there next to them doing nothing, because his penis won’t become erect.

I said to her that with Eleni it often does work. I can easily maintain an erection, and postpone my orgasms. She says that this is because I know her well, because I have been with her more often. According to Felicia Anna I feel more relaxed.

She told that there are also clients who only want to talk, just like I do now. And she has clients with the strangest wishes. Such as a man who paid 550 euro to walk around like a dog across her room, for almost three hours. She only had to look at him from her bed.

I told her that her boyfriend Mark van der Beer said that she had seen me, and that she really found me schizo. She told me that she thought I was somebody else. This was a regular client of hers.

She told that she didn’t understand the stories of some well-known victims of forced prostitutes. She had discussions with some of them on twitter. She asks why these women didn’t get help from the police, or why clients didn’t help them. And she doesn’t understand how a prostitute could initially choose to work in prostitution, but later end up being forced.

I told Felica Anna that this could be the case because these women left prostitution in 2007, and then the situation was very different from how it was now. And perhaps the police didn’t help in the past, but now they do.

I also asked her if she knew Saban B, he is the well-known pimp who extorted a lot of prostitutes and fellow pimps until 2007 on de Wallen. She had heard vaguely about him. I also asked her if she was approached by extorting men who asked to protect her in exchange for money. She said this never happened. But there was once a man once who asked her to become his boyfriend or something, and who also offered her protection or something. (I couldn’t really follow her at this moment.) [UPDATE: ... and it later turned out that she didn't say this at all. I really totally misunderstood, about the man who asked her to be her boyfriend that is.]

I brought forward the proposition that perhaps in the past there was much more forced prostitution on de Wallen, but now perhaps a lot less. Obviously I gladly hope what Felicia Anna tells is true, because I visit de Wallen regularly nowadays. I told her about a former forced prostitutes who confided to me that she thought that nearly all prostitutes on de Wallen (and het Zandpad) were coerced. (That perhaps some 40-years-old prostitutes were not forced, but they all entered prostitution because of a pimp.) But perhaps this was the case in the past. But Felicia Anna obviously doesn’t believe this.

At one moment I was out of questions. But I made up something. She told on twitter that she knows most the prostitutes who work on de Wallen. She says she knows 90% of them. So I subjected her to a test. Did she know Eleni? Yes, she indeed does! She could easily point out where she works. She has spoken with her a couple of times, and drank coffee with her. Eleni doesn’t seem to know Felicia Anna by the way. She probably forgot.

Did she know Susana with her green lingerie and her wiggling butt? Astonishingly enough she also knows her too! But she doesn’t know her particularly well. But she did speak with her a couple of times. I talked about the embarrassing situation when I stood outside after 5 minutes after a visit to Susana. I thought that Susana perhaps was coerced because she so bluntly got rid of her clients. Felicia Anna said that could be the case because a number of clients are not so nice. They could shout things like “suck me bitch” or something like that. (I didn’t do that with Suzana).

I asked her if she knew Mary with the thick glasses. No, she didn’t know her. And she also didn’t know the Russian Kristina. I told her that Kristina didn’t let me inside. Kristina simply let me stand in front of her window. I have never experienced that before. Felicia Anna said that just like Kristina she also refused clients every now and then.

Well, I think her hit ratio is 50% or something! 2 out of 4. [It turns out that she actually does know Kristina, and she doesn't like her, and she is actually Romanian. So that makes the hit ratio 75%, 3 out of 4.]

I told her once that I warned Meld Misdaad Anoniem (=report crime anonymously) regarding one prostitute. I noticed that this women behaved weirdly and nervously. When I wanted to penetrate her doggystyle, she pulled her body back and more upward. Other clients who have described her also say this. Felicia explained that doggystyle could be a painful position for a woman. You could really hurt a woman in this position. Women differ among each other in this respect, and some women can’t handle the bigger penises that well. The same could be true for this particular woman. I said that I wasn’t that well hung. She said, that in my case perhaps this woman still couldn’t handle my size in that position. And she said that Dutch men often are ‘big’.

I talked with her about the Gucci-bags. She tells just as Mark van der Beer does, that prostitutes have the tendency to walk around wearing expensive clothes and sporting expensive bags. Their question to people is, would human traffickers allow this? I told her that on rechtspraak.nl I read about cases in which women were absolutely coerced to work in prostitution, but these women still neatly received 50% of their earnings from the pimps. Perhaps they buy Gucci-bags with this money? Here the conversation hit a dead end, because she absolutely didn’t agree with this. We just went around in circles where she again explains you can easily go to the police, etc... And if you are forced then you call the police, don’t you? Unfortunately, I forgot to use the argument that pimps are very capable of threatening the prostitutes and their family members, and that the prostitutes simply don’t dare to go to the police. But I think that we wouldn’t have been able to leave the circle, if I would have said it.

I suddenly realized that one of the last trains would depart soon, and I quickly said goodbye to her. I said that I hoped that she was right, and that the situation had improved.

By the way, I did offered my apologies for violating her privacy. She is very forgiving and tolerant.

And if somebody has questions, you may always ask it to her on twitter.

PS: Mark van der Beer stopped with his blogs and twitter-account, because he wanted to prevent that he and his girlfriend would be discovered, and he didn’t want to get in her way since she appeared on twitter.

PS 2: she unblocked me.

PS 3: I have asked on twitter what she thinks of the threats that pimps utter to prostitutes. Doesn’t that make the prostitutes scared enough not to call in the help of the police and clients? She says that if you just think rationally, then you shouldn’t be afraid. You can call the police, and the police will help you. And if they threaten family members in your home country, then you call the police in your home country, and they will be there before the pimps have arrived in your home country. She asked if I really believe “someone would kill two people, risk jail, for one girl, for some money”? She said that I watch too much TV. I said it doesn’t matter, because it’s the perception of the forced prostitutes themselves which is most important. They regard the threats as to be taken seriously. It doesn’t matter if the pimps never carry out their threats. She says that the women can go to the police anonymously. And so on, … see! We are going around in circles.

And she never saw a very evil person who financially exploits a prostitute, by way of deception, violence and/or threats of violence, in four years time. She says she just sees boys who have girls there, but they don’t use force or violence on them. She never saw a pimp in four years.

Sunday, March 02, 2014

Dear Cliente X, by accident I discovered the reviews on hookers.nl concerning a former victim of human trafficking whose verdict has been released on rechtspraak.nl. Because her pimp was convicted, you can safely say that she really was a forced prostitute. You can read how clients describe her. She has left prostitution for years now, but her old reviews can still be viewed on the wayback machine.

The perpetrator, a Moroccan man, forced two Moroccan women into prostitution. The woman I found reviews about is called victim 1 in the published verdict. I will give a short summary of what the man did to her. Basically, I just copy some text from the blog posts above, which are some translations I made from the original Dutch verdict, and I have made some amendments using the appeal:

[Victim 1] has lived at her parent’s home until the age of 15. A man came once to ask permission to marry her. This man was [suspect] and he came from Utrecht. [Suspect] came together with his mother to the house of [victim 1] and asked the mother and the uncle of [victim 1] permission to marry her. Within a week [victim 1] was married to [suspect]. She then was 15 years old.
After the marriage [suspect] went back to the Netherlands after a week. [Victim 1] then stayed in Morocco. When he came back after seven or eight months, he said to her that her documents were ready and that she was allowed to accompany him to the Netherlands. [Suspect] told her that she would study and work in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, [victim 1] came to live in the house of her mother-in-law, on the [address]. Later on, she went living with [suspect] in Bilthoven. Also after she has lived in Bilthoven, she went back to the house of her mother-in-law. She had the key of the house of her mother-in-law. She has also lived with other family members of [suspect].
During the period that [victim 1] lived with her mother-in-law, her passport was in the possession of [suspect].
[Victim 1] couldn't read or write the Dutch language. She knew nothing about the Netherlands. She wasn't allowed by [suspect] to follow Dutch lessons. She has only been to school for 1 or 2 days.

Since the first day that she lived in the Netherlands, she was beaten by [suspect]. She was beaten with the hand or with shoes. [Suspect] once also shaved her head bare. Her hair was then so short that she couldn't grab it anymore. This was during the wedding of the brother of [suspect], [involved person 6]. She was also raped in her anus.
[Suspect] has threatened her that he would kill her and her mother and sisters. [Victim 1] was obliged by [suspect] to have sex with other men for money. He taught her gestures for giving a blowjob and fucking. [Suspect] also demonstrated it with a banana and a condom. At first he showed her the window prostitutes on de Wallen in Amsterdam. She also had to look at the window prostitutes on het Zandpad in Utrecht. She was barely eighteen years old. When she was 18 or 19 years old he brought her to Utrecht. Since the age of 19 she worked on het Zandpad. (Things are a little bit unclear here, according to the perpetrator she at first began to work in Amsterdam. According to the victim, she also worked on de Wallen in Amsterdam).

During the first months, her room on the Zandpad in Utrecht was arranged by [suspect]. At the moment she knew how to do it herself, she arranged it herself from then on.
On March 6, 2009, when she worked on the Zandpad, [victim 1] declared to the police that [suspect] acted as her chauffeur every now and then.
The money that she earned she had to give to [suspect]. If she didn't give money to him, then he would kill her. He also beat her if she didn’t earn enough money, or if she didn’t work long enough. The more money that she earned, the better it was. She earned at least between 500 and 700 guilders per day and at most between 2000 and 3000 guilders per day. She never earned less than €500 per day (comment by Donkey: yes, they are mixing up the currencies). When [suspect] was in jail, she had to send the money to the prison and pay rent to a Czech man for a restaurant.

[Suspect] gave her drugs. Since the age of 17 she started to use drugs. She couldn't work without the drugs and the drugs took her shame away, it made her less shy. She never obtained the drugs herself, [suspect] did that.

She has scars on her eyebrows. She once also broke her nose. He beat her in those spots on her face. She once was forced to work with a broken leg, caused by an accident. She also worked with stitches in her eyebrows. In 2006 she divorced him. She stopped working in prostitution in 2008 when she was pregnant (, the clients mention a return in 2009 by the way). A client who regularly visited her until 2007 on de Zandpad observed bruises on her body. Every time he was with her she had a bruise. She told him that she was regularly beaten by her husband, and that her husband forced her to work in prostitution. Together with another prostitute he helped her flee to Spain. This other prostitute also mentions that she had bruises. The client mentions that her work was her life, because she had no life outside this. More clients and other persons are mentioned who have noticed injuries and scars on her body. She told more people she was coerced.

[Victim 1] apparently trusted on it that the suspect - as her partner - would offer her a new future, but she has been betrayed by the suspect in that respect. The suspect's family, in which she was admitted, did not resist or barely resisted the acts of the suspect, they even partly supported him.
The suspect has put [victim 1], when she just had become 18 years old, to work on the Zandpad. To bring and to keep [victim 1] in prostitution, the suspect didn't shy away of any means: he implemented violence and he threatened with violence against herself and the persons she loves and he forced her to use drugs.
By doing this, he did make sure that she stayed isolated, so that he could keep her under control and she couldn't or hardly could appeal to social workers for example.
Only when the suspect stayed imprisoned for a long time since August 2005, [victim 1] somewhat succeeded in struggling out of his influence, in any case in such a way, that in 2007 she visited her family in Spain. Later on, she even dared to ask, when she was pregnant, to hand over only a part of her earnings.
As happens more often when one of the means of exploitation is an affectionate relationship feigned by the pimp, [victim 1] has returned to the suspect again, more often than she herself could understand. She also partly attributes it to sorcery. Aside from that, she felt that because of the continued existence of her Moroccan marriage with the suspect, she was forced to return to him (again and again).
The court can also explain her return to the suspect and to the life that wasn't wished by her, like one of the witnesses has done: "[victim 1]'s work was her life because she didn't have a life beyond that … in some situations you do something because you have no better alternatives".
The court adds to this that the suspect took away the other and earlier life from [victim 1], by bringing her in a situation that estranged her from her family and that made impossible a further life in her country of origin.

That was the short summary. Now what do the clients tell about her? The funny thing is, they are very enthusiastic about her!!! Although it must be said that some clients find her a little bit emotionally unstable. She often talks very stupidly and very quickly, and she sometimes could hardly be understood. Several clients call her hyperactive. Some clients do have the icky feeling that she doesn’t entirely work voluntarily. The clients describe her as a horny little devil, but some say she exaggerates a bit in that respect. According to clients she does seem to like the sex a lot, and she does her work with a lot of devotion. She groans a lot during the sex. A couple of clients call her a ‘whirlwind’ or a ‘tornado’. One clients says she is amazing, nice, naughty and she has a sense of humour.

Clients mention that after they have entered her room, she immediately starts to French kiss them. Regular clients are received enthusiastically, as if she is happy to see them again. A client describes how she immediately French kissed him after he entered her room. She said to him she was also very horny. She undressed eagerly, and she lied down on the bed, and she aroused him from there. During the blowjobs she often French kisses her clients, and she rubs her breasts on their bodies.

One client describes how she lured him into her window prostitution room. She pushed her breasts together and she challenged him with a horny expression on her face. Another client describes how he had a nice conversation with her after the sex. The clients are very fond of her blowjob techniques which she performed with a lot of devotion. Another describes how she treated him as a long lost lover. One client said she would treat him better because he was a handsome young man. She gave one client winegums afterwards. A client describes her as kind and sincere. He finds her a very friendly person. Another client says that she describes her work as her hobby.

She said to one client that she needed to have 20 clients that day, because it was payday. She said there weren’t many clients that weeks because of the (construction) activities on het Zandpad. She said that after the deduction of the rent, she only earned 10 euro weekly.

She said to one client she had a quarrel with her husband just before he (the client) entered her room. He had the impression that she thought something like: what do I care? She started to French kiss him, and his clothes were almost torn off his body. She suddenly gave him a blowjob without condom. According to him, she had an orgasm after he licked her pussy. He said they had sex like savages, in the missionary position, doggy style, and with French kisses all over. She wanted him to ejaculate in her mouth, and she swallowed everything. He said that he left the boat with trembling legs. But the next time she thought it would be nice if he had more money in his pocket, because he had stayed for an hour, and he paid afterwards, but it turned out he didn’t have much money. More clients say that she often doesn’t ask money in advance.

A client says she uses funny remarks like: “your dick tastes like strawberries, delicious”, “you have beautiful blue eyes, may I have child from you?”, “Nobody is allowed to cum in my mouth, except you”, “And now you have to pay 2000 euro, because I have to pay the rent”.

Although this woman was clearly coerced, a couple of clients mention she went to her family in Morocco for 5 weeks. One client told her afterwards that she didn’t go to Morocco. She told one client she had a week off, and she had a quarrel with her boyfriend so she didn’t have sex for a week. She said to him she was very horny. He was the first client after that week. And he clearly noticed this the following 45 minutes. Another client mentions that she wasn’t present for a while because she had a flue. A client mentions that she didn’t work during the Ramadan, but she still had to pay the window rent all the time. So it is interesting to notice that the pimp didn’t coerce here to work all the time. He did give her some time off every now and then. And he gave her the freedom to buy things, because one client mentions that she was about to buy sheep for the festival of sacrifice. And one client mentions she didn’t work every day of the week. She worked during the afternoons during the weekdays, and he also spotted her on a Saturday once. Another client mentions that she works between 10:00 and 18:00 hours, so that isn’t particularly long.

At the end of 2004, she told one client that the rumours that she was going to divorce her husband were untrue, and she wasn’t going to stop working in prostitution. She urged him to write this down on hookers.nl, or else it would cost her clients, and everybody could write just everything.

A client complains to the other reviewers that they shouldn’t criticize her for talking too much. He actually quite likes that. He found her very enthusiastic and she clearly enjoyed the sex. He called her a girl with class. She said to him that she was upset that some people write so negatively about her on hookers.nl, and that some said that she would stop working in prostitution, which wasn’t true. He found her the best prostitute he ever met. Another client notices that some men call her unstable, but in his opinion she just lives fast, and she is just very enjoyable. He mentions that she had a broken leg, because she fell off the balcony while washing the windows. He mentioned this on May 26, 2005. He had visited her that afternoon. This is also mentioned in one of the verdicts by the way. It was noticed by relief workers of the Huiskamer Aanloopproject Prostituees (HAP = living room of visitors project for prostitutes) who mentioned on June 17, 2005 that she has broken her right leg. She was asked if her husband had anything to do with it. No, this time it wasn't. The pimp was originally charged with pushing her off the balcony which supposedly caused her to break her legs, but this charge was dropped later.

By the way, it really seems to be her. In one of the verdicts (the appeal) her date of birth is mentioned. This turns out to be July 1, 1981. A client mentions that on July 1, 2005 she will become 24. So this is exactly right. Several clients also mention her pregnancy during the period between February 23, 2008 and March 12, 2008. She was in the late stages of pregnancy, and she told a client that she was 5 months pregnant (, this wasn’t exactly right). One client said she would work until pregnancy leave. In reality the police stopped her from working while being pregnant. She told a client on October 12, 2008, that she gave birth to her daughter in April 2008, and that she didn’t work for eight months.

According to one verdict (the appeal), she has worked on de Zandpad with bruises on her body and in her face. The clients on hookers.nl never mention this. This is strange.

All in all, it seems as if she really enjoyed her work according to the clients. But according to a client who testified to the police (or court or whatever), this was the case because working in prostitution was her life, and because she didn’t have another life. This woman was clearly coerced, with a capital C. This case is a proof that forced prostitutes could absolutely seem to be enjoying their work from the perspective of the clients. And perhaps this woman really did enjoy her work in prostitution, but she still was coerced anyway. The two things don’t rule each other out.

BTW: Her case was one of the major reasons why the municipality of Utrecht decided to close the window prostitution boats on het Zandpad. The municipality accused the brothel owners that they didn't interfere when this particular victim worked with bruises on her body and with a broken leg, and while being pregnant.

BTW 2: There are reviews about women on hookers.nl of whom it is very clear that they are coerced. But there is no confirmation on rechtspraak.nl. This is the first victim described on rechtspraak.nl of whom I could track down her reviews on hookers.nl. The point now is, how many of the seemingly happy hookers described on hookers.nl are actually coerced? I hope the woman I regularly visit as a client is not coerced. She tells me she isn't. I hope she's right.

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

I recently had contact with a prostitute. Not to have paid sex with her, but just to speak with her directly.

I wanted to talk about what she said earlier about her clients, that overall they were nice, and they never caused problems. She says the clients are very sweet to her. In the past she was coerced into prostitution. You can read about what she said in the previous post on my blog:

(…) She receives clients in her home. She is 100% real, and until recently she has really worked in prostitution. She had many clients during the last several years who came to her because she indicated that she now works voluntarily and that she enjoys her work. She only receives Dutch clients, and this is also indicated in her advertisement. She finds that the clients are very kind and sweet towards prostitutes, she means the Dutch clients. She had few disrespectful experiences, and during the last several years she has worked with a lot of pleasure. She had some very pleasant contacts with some men, with whom she maintained a good relationship. But she believes that could be also true because she does what she promises, and she has fixed price agreements. She says there obviously is scum, but she has to admit that she never had a noteworthy problem with a client, at most that she refused him because she found him too fat. But this was during the time she worked for herself. During the time she worked for an abusive pimp, she hated all her clients on principle and she wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible. She said she emanated the typical signals: she didn’t cooperate enthusiastically, she kept her hand between her legs, she gave blowjobs in a very clinical way. She said that if men paid money for that they obviously start to complain. But when she worked independently she had a lot of pleasant experiences. She said about [prostitutes who complain the clients cross their boundaries] that apparently they weren’t clear enough to their clients. She didn’t have problems with gropers, but she immediately explains in the beginning what the rules are. Clients are not allowed to put their fingers in her anus and to ejaculate in her mouth. Furthermore, she breaks the ice by saying that she prefers to survive it. She says that the men generally lie stiffly on their back on the bed (at least the non-regulars), and she has to ask them to join in more actively, to keep them interactive. She says about the prostitutes who dare to speak in public, that they often show off and like to exaggerate. She says that prostitutes do this in general. And they forget to tell that the moment in life they chose to work in prostitution was often not so prosperous. She actually knows only a few prostitutes who do this work for the fun and the kick of it. She says money plays a very important role. (…)

I still had some more questions, so we decided to speak face to face. The following is a summary of the conversation I had with her in real life and also via the internet later and earlier.

For a while she was forced into prostitution. At first she herself made the decision to work in prostitution. But after a short while she entered into an abusive relationship with a pimp. At first she agreed with him that he would protect her in exchange for some money, but after a while he basically took all the money. At that time she was really young and naive. She knew nothing about the city life and de Wallen. This abusive situation endured for some years, but at the end she could wrest herself free from his influence, and she now works as an independent prostitute, with a lot of pleasure. So she is not a passive victim of human trafficking. She is very open-minded. She just had the bad luck to meet a very bad person.

I asked her why she didn’t escape immediately? That’s what many people ask her. I asked her why she didn’t flee far far away? For instance, to Italy? She said she couldn’t because she had no money at that time. I said she could walk to Italy instead! She didn’t think about this solution at the moment. I asked if her family members were threatened. She said yes. He did approach several family members.

For a long time she didn’t realize she was forced into prostitution. That came later after she left him, when people of the police said to her that it is involuntary when you are kept in a situation in which you don’t want to be. Only then she started to realize it. She didn’t consider herself a victim of prostitution, but she did realize that she was extorted. She didn’t realize that this is also categorized as forced prostitution.

During the time she worked on de Wallen she didn’t say to other people that she was coerced. She laughed while being at work, and she had fun. She did have nice periods behind the window. For her it was better to be behind the window than at home where she was beaten up by her boyfriend. She even told the vice inspector on de Wallen that she worked for herself. She didn’t realize that her pimp was punishable under the law.

She is a bit agitated by the two opposing camps within the world of prostitution. One camp mainly focuses on the victims within the sex industry. The other camp denies forced prostitution altogether. She finds it strange that people believe there is no abuse in the sex industry. She says that even in the asparagus cultivation industry abuse happens, so why not in the sex industry? She points to the website kinky.nl where dozens of Eastern European prostitutes are advertised with penis-into-vagina sex without condom.

We talked for a short while again about her clients. It is still a mystery to me why some prostitutes are so positive about their clients, while others are so negative. I talked about the prostitute who wrote to me that clients don’t care about agreements, they do whatever they want, without taking the prostitutes into account. She answered it could have something to do with the appearance of these prostitutes. She thinks that perhaps the less beautiful prostitutes receive the more evil clients. And she also wonders why some prostitutes work in the sex industry in the first place. She says men obviously want to insert their fingers into the vaginas of prostitutes. She has oil for these purposes. She doesn’t understand the prostitutes who don’t want clients to do this.

She mentioned that she doesn’t need any protection from pimps or security companies, because the clients are never dangerous. She first lets them into her house, she asks them to go to the shower, and that’s it.

She also mentioned that she gives blowjobs to her clients without protection. I asked her if you really notice it when you don’t advertise with oral sex without condom. She says that if she doesn’t offer blowjobs without condom very few clients come to her. She decided 2 years ago that oral sex without condom is not so dangerous, after reading something about it on soaaids.nl. She says clients want oral sex without condom and penetration with condom, so that’s what she offers.

I asked her about the situation on de Wallen where she has worked during the time of the notorious pimp Saban B. (Saban B was arrested February 2007). I asked her if Saban B was really the boss of de Wallen like some people have said. She doesn’t really know the answer. She does know that the pimps all knew each other. Saban didn’t harass her because he probably thought that she and her pimp belonged to a group of prostitutes who worked for the Hells Angels. The relationship between the Hells Angels and the prostitutes who worked for them is similar to other prostitute-pimp relationships, according to her. She said that many people didn’t realize that Saban was this big, only when he was mentioned in the newspapers. She didn’t have the impression that he was the boss. She also doesn’t know if it is impossible the work on de Wallen without a pimp (, I asked that question to her). She said that pimps did try to steal women from each other. That’s why her pimp didn’t allow her to look the other pimps in the face. Unfortunately she has no inside information about Eastern European pimps, but she did see them.

On de Wallen, she saw the women come and go with their Moroccan boyfriends. Under the guise of love the boys cajoled money from the women for years. She heard them phoning with their boyfriends. She saw the bruises. What’s more, they (the prostitutes) were joking about it with each other. The women with whom she worked all had bruises at least once a week, and they were clearly accompanied to their work. She said you wouldn’t know that prostitutes are forced. She worked in between other women who had a very big mouth, but who still were coerced anyway.

Now that the opportunity presented itself, I asked her about another big paradox that I’m struggling with. If it is true that so many prostitutes are coerced into prostitution and so much violence is used, why do I rarely observe bruises on the bodies of the prostitutes I see in brothels and window prostitution areas? On one occasion I observed a very small bruise on the back of a Hungarian prostitute. This is when I thought: hey, she has a bruise, the first one that I see! This bruise could have easily been caused by a little accident.

So I asked her (not the Hungarian girl!) for an explanation. She said the prostitutes she knew clearly had bruises. The girls talked openly about what were the causes of these bruises. She said her pimp never hit her on visible parts of her body. Her back was a favourite. Her face was avoided. She says that obviously you don’t ruin merchandise. I asked her if they could camouflage bruises with makeup. She said yes, but also with clothes. They also wore clothes during sex with the clients. She didn’t take off her bra for 50 euro anyway. So if she wore a bra with a low cleavage, nobody saw the bruises. And she didn’t take off her little sweater during sex, and if the clients started to complain she hit the alarm button. The police often doesn’t come, and because of the noise the clients run away anyway. Most are tourists, and in their country prostitution is illegal. I asked her if it is easy to mask bruises with makeup. She says it isn’t, but with professional makeup it can be done. In addition, bruises can be masked in the blue and red light, during the evening hours at least. She often had bruises on her legs. She often wore jeans and a little jacket with an open cleavage. She took her jeans off, but often she still wore her jacket. She could also cover her legs with stockings, or high boots, and she also wore a skirt and blouse, and then she only took off her skirt.

She complains that social workers mainly focus on helping prostitutes out of prostitution, while many prostitutes want to leave the abusive situation, not prostitution per se. If a Chinese cooking assistant is saved from an abusive situation, then it is obvious that this person wants to continue working as a cook because that’s what this person is good at. And the same is true for a prostitute. It is not strange to see many rescued prostitutes returning to prostitution.

It is not prostitution that damaged her, but her pimp. Before she met him she found the work very pleasant to do. As an independent prostitute she never had any problems, but during the time with her pimp she did have problems, because she didn’t like the idea to have sex with her clients while not getting anything of the money she earned. She probably would have done this job all this time anyway, even when he wouldn’t have entered into her life.

She thinks what is also true that she had negative experiences with her clients during her time with her pimp, is because she worked in window prostitution during that period. She says that window prostitutes tend to get rid of their clients quickly. Window prostitution play tricks on clients. That’s the reason why clients could become agitated. She also worked this way. My personal impression by the way is that this is not true. Prostitutes in different sectors don’t differ that much from each other, in this respect. My experience is, that also window prostitutes are generally very friendly and patient. I obviously also met grumpy window prostitutes. And there are also grumpy prostitutes in clubs who try to get rid of you as quickly as possible.

She believes that prostitutes who work behind a window or in a club, but who don’t have a pimp, are also victims. Because often they have to hand over 50% or most of the money they earn to the brothel owner. She says these women don’t know how to arrange things properly. She said it would be best if the women pay a fixed amount of money per day. The amount should be determined by unions. She thinks receiving clients in your own home is the best option for prostitutes.

I think the conversations I had with her were very interesting. Unfortunately I have to admit that I don’t believe her sometimes. Especially about how she experiences her clients, and I have big difficulties believing her stories about bruises. But perhaps I am way too critical, and the things she describes are how things really happen in prostitution. I really understand that most clients of prostitutes are truly overpornified dorks, and I am sometimes afraid that I belong to this type of clients myself. Perhaps it is just projection. But I think generally I am friendly towards the prostitutes.

About Me

I am a compulsive visitor of prostitutes and porn sites, and I desperately want to stop. I'm also known as Kris2 and @Donkey_Kris2 on twitter. I have studied the Dutch sex industry for years to find information about how to separate forced from voluntary prostitutes, and I share this information on my blog. My current position is that prostitution and porn are always violations of human rights. Prostitution is paid sexual harassment of poor and destitute people who have very limited means to prevent this harassment. Porn is sexual torture captured on film. I would brand myself as a socialist, a vegan, an abolitionist and as a sex-negative person.